1693.] MOHAWK TOWNS CAPTURED. oil 



fell in fainter radiance on the rocks and pines 

 behind them. 



Sixteen clays brought them to the two lower 

 Mohawk towns. A young Dutchman who had 

 been captured three years before at Schenectady, 

 and whom the Indians of the Saut had imprudently 

 brought with them, ran off in the night, and car- 

 ried the alarm to the English. The invaders had 

 no time to lose. The two towns were a quarter 

 of a league apart. They surrounded them both 

 on the night of the sixteenth of February, waited 

 in silence till the voices within were hushed, and 

 then captured them without resistance, as most of 

 the inmates were absent. After burning one of 

 them, and leaving the prisoners well guarded in 

 the other, they marched eight leagues to the third 



town, reached it at evening and hid in the neigh- 

 s' o 



boring woods. Through all the early night, they 

 heard the whoops and songs of the warriors within, 

 who were dancing the war-dance for an intended 

 expedition. About midnight, all was still. The 

 Mohawks had posted no sentinels ; and one of 

 the French Indians, scaling the palisade, opened 

 the gate to his comrades. There was a short but 

 bloody fight. Twenty or thirty Mohawks were 

 killed, and nearly three hundred captured, chiefly 

 women and children. The French commanders 

 now required their allies, the mission Indians, to 

 make good a promise which, at the instance of 

 Frontenac, had been exacted from them by the 

 governor of Montreal. It was that they should 

 kill all their male captives, a proceeding which 



